I am not surprised to see Rich Barton involved in another startup, especially one with a social networking concept. I am also not surprised to see this new venture, Glassdoor , hit the scene in stealth mode as his other company,Zillow did. Lastly I am not surprised to see Benchmark fund this thing.
From the comments on Dustin’s blog you can see that others at Zillow know about this venture and claim that it is not real estate related. Not everybody believes this but I believe them because it would be too great a conflict of interest for Rich and Zillow.
I think that Rich and his team at Glassdoor realize that the concept of harnessing social networks is ripe. Transparency, collaboration, search, and the wisdom of crowds are all part of this picture. Growing up we used the saying “you make a better door than a window” whenever someone blocked your view. I believe that social networks and web 2.0 are set to open views and provide access to information that has been, until now, behind closed doors.